"The Justification
of Johann Gutenberg"

"Eternity to man was never a promise of mine
But eternity for a book: that I could arrange."

With
his clever title implying simultaneously Gutenberg's justification of
his life as it nears its end, his judgment by posterity, and a typesetter's
spacing of words so that both left and right margins are even, Morrison
sets the tone for this fascinating story about Johann Gutenberg and his
development of the first printing press. The invention most responsible
for the spread of knowledge from the mid-fifteenth century till the development
of the computer, the printing press was a far more clandestine and potentially
subversive invention than one might imagine, and its creation was fraught
with peril, financially, legally, and intellectually.

Beginning
as the first-person recollections of Gutenberg as an old man in 1464,
as he thinks about his end-of-life exile in Eltville, not far from Mainz,
the novel establishes both Gutenberg's desire to be remembered and his
loneliness. As he says to his scribe Anton, "When a man has been
first, the world should know it," but former supporters have "usurped"
his presses and supplies in Mainz, and they have publicly deprecated him.
He remains alone, in exile, his words being his only "children"
and comfort.

Born the
son of a wealthy German aristocrat from Mainz and a shopkeeper's daughter,
the man who became known as Johann Gutenberg found himself trapped socially
from his earliest days, unable to become a Companion of the Mint, like
his school friends, because of his mother's lowly birth, and unable to
be accepted by the working classes because of his father's. "The
mint-boys liked looking down on me," he says, while "the guild-boys
hated looking up."

Rejecting
a life in the priesthood, and unable to gain a footing in a trade, Gutenberg
goes to university, becomes a scribe in a Benedictine scriptorium, and
eventually has a mystical experience-or one to which he wryly ascribes
mystical overtones when talking to an audience, at least. One day in the
forest, when he was feeding the birds, he says, "it was as if the
dove that perched [on my hand] spreading its wings had become an open
book. And the dove departing from me was like a book taking flight. And
the grain the dove held in its beak was like a kernel of knowledge seeding
itself through the world." After gaining experience as a coin-maker
and engraver, he listens to the voice of the Rhine, which tells him to
travel, and leaves Mainz for other northern European cities, not returning
for many years.

Life for
an inventor of something as revolutionary as the printing press is not
easy. Always in debt, regardless of where he is working, never able to
repay his creditors, willing to sacrifice the woman he loves for his ambition,
and at the mercy of both the guilds, who have a vested interest in having
his invention fail, and the church which fears the potential power of
a secular press, Gutenberg's entire life is a fight. Creditors constantly
take him to court, and he often has to start over. But as he points out
to his sworn-to-secrecy employees, a scribe working 200 days a year would
need six years to complete a 1200-page Bible, and three scribes would
need two years. With twenty employees, Gutenberg, too, would need two
years to make one acceptable copy of the Bible, using 40,000 pieces of
type and a ton of paper, but once that one successful copy is made, one
hundred more copies can be made with the same type. "A book,"
he says, "can be reborn. When one version dies through rotting or
burning, another - just the same - rises in its place Eternity for
a book: that I can arrange."

In clear,
deceptively simple, and sometimes lyrical prose, Morrison recreates the
physical, social, and intellectual environment in which Gutenberg and
his acquaintances operate. Gutenberg's first person recollections are
sometimes ingenuous, usually honest, occasionally apologetic, and always
driven by his ambition "to help words fly as far as doves,"
by promoting the successful development of his press.

The actual
Johann Gutenberg is something of a mystery, but Morrison adds muscle and
tooth to the skeletal framework of what is known, creating a character
which, if not realistic, is certainly plausible. Though parts of the book,
such as a section about the making of type may not be intriguing to all
readers, Morrison sandwiches the technical sections between more personal
dramas, like Gutenberg's love interests and the machinations of his enemies
to gain his machines. Homely details about subjects such as why vellum
is preferred to paper, and where and how each is acquired, add color to
what might otherwise be a black and white exposition about an arcane subject,
while the archaic and formal language helps to create a sense of time
and place. The historically accurate sections about the siege of Mainz
by a radical movement within the church, the expulsion of eight hundred
citizens, including Gutenberg when he is an old man, and the seizure of
their properties, add drama to this unusual novel.

At the end
of his life, in exile in Eltville, Gutenberg is still working at his craft,
hoping to create a dictionary of vernacular German. "Give me longer,"
he says, "and I will print in ruder tongues, for as the birds in
the field sing in several voices, so men do - there is no one language
for truth." Every person who loves and buys books celebrates in some
way, however distantly, the achievements of Gutenberg. In this intriguing
novel, author Morrison celebrates them without reservation and brings
them to life.

About the Author:

Blake
Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire, in 1950. He was educated
at the University of Nottingham and University College, London. He worked
for the Times Literary Supplement between 1978 and 1981 and was
then literary editor for both The Observer and the Independent
on Sunday. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a former
Chairman of the Poetry Book Society and council member of the Poetry Society,
a member of the Literature Panel of the Arts Council of England and Vice-Chairman
of English PEN.

Blake is
a literary journalist, poet, essayist, playwright, and novelist. His non-fiction
books And When Did You Last See Your Father? -- an honest and moving
account of his father's life and death -- won the J. R. Ackerley Prize
and the Esquire/Volvo/Waterstone's Non-Fiction Book Award.